New York Harbor
Ambrose Channel is dredged to forty feet at low water. On the spring tides the low water may fall another foot, leaving but thirty-nine feet in the Ambrose Channel at low water. As the ship draws between thirty-nine and forty feet on arrival at New York, it is not safe to try to enter at any other stage of the tide than at high water. Owing to her great bulk it is improbable that any amount of tugs could dock the ship at Hoboken when the current is running in the North River, so for docking at Hoboken, the ship’s arrival must be timed so that she is off Hoboken at the slack water. As the slack water at Hoboken is after the slack water in Ambrose Channel, we enter Ambrose Channel then at high water and carry slackwater all the way up the channel and dock at Hoboken on the high water slack tide. On sailing from Hoboken she is undocking on the low water slack tide, so as to arrive in Ambrose Channel at the next high water. The deep draft of the ship on leaving New York, namely, forty-one feet ten inches, requires that in leaving New York Harbor and as far as the Narrows, the ship must seek what might be called the prehistoric gorge of the Hudson River. There are many places between Hoboken and the Narrows even in what ordinarily would be called the navigable fairway, that are so shallow that the Leviathan would go aground. This prehistoric gorge is accurately known to Captain William S. McLaughlin, Master Pilot of the New York-Sandy Hook Pilots, who always pilots the Leviathan out and in.